A new study has revealed that the presidential candidate of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has outperformed the two other major presidential candidates – Peter Obi of Labour Party and Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the ruling All Progressive Congress, APC – on positive ratio metrics in all the mentions from every discussions about the presidential candidates across all media platforms and fora reviewed.
According to the report which used Artificial Intelligence tools to analyze 500, 000 mentions of the candidates on both traditional and social media within a one month period, it revealed that although Atiku Abubakar has less mentions in some of the media, especially on Twitter, as compared to Peter Obi, he, however, got more positive sentiments from people than the duo of Tinubu and Peter Obi.
What this means is that people who discussed about the candidates said more positive things about Atiku Abubakar than they did for Peter Obi and, even expressed lesser positive sentiments about Tinubu.
The 46 page document by CustomReport, an independent research body, was titled the “Brand Insights: Atiku Abubakar’s Online presence compared to Peter Obi’s and Bola Tinubu’s.”
In trying to analyze the politicians’ online presence, the study covered areas such as the positive ratio of the total mentions in discussions about the presidential candidates; the volume and reach of discussions about them, the performance of the discussion sources and the most engaging posts talking about the most engaging moments about them.
Meanwhile, the research relied on a methodology that excludes posts about the candidates that are not in English language as well as posts from all global social media accounts.
It also used five metrics to base the generated data for the analysis and the metrics includes: negative/positive sentiments in the posts about them; Mentions and source; social media interactions, posts reach and presence score.
Similarly, it monitored the official Facebook profiles and other social media pages and handles sharing relevant contents about the candidates, digging deep into about 500 thousand posts from 28th of May, 2022 to the 25th of June, 2022 to arrive at its findings.
According to the report, although Atiku’s Twitter handle has more followers than the duo of Peter Obi’s and Tinubu’s, he was, however, five times less mentioned in comments Tinubu and, especially Peter Obi on Twitter.
“…the Average Reach per one Facebook mention about Peter Obi accounted for approximately 20.5k impressions, which is over twice as much as in the case of mentions regarding Atiku Abubakar,” the study said.
Nevertheless, it revealed that despite being the least mentioned, Atiku got more favourable comments than the other candidates.
Also, the report revealed that on Facebook, while Atiku has same post reach with Peter Obi, he, however, has the highest volume of post mentions than Tinubu and Obi.
Likewise Atiku’s Instagram “post mention generated more Reach than a single mention in any other source.”
Moreover, in analyzing the political popularity of the candidates based on the indices above, the report said that in terms of emotionally charged mentions, while Tinubu and Peter Obi had only about 25% positive mentions in all the conversations in the month under review on all the platforms studied, Atiku Abubakar had 55% positive mentions in all the discussions from people talking about the candidates.
It noted that the most popular mentions about the three candidates referred to them as ‘president.’
“In every case, the most popular topics of discussion were recognized as those within which people referred to the politicians as presidents,” said the study.
Conversely, in terms of negative mentions, the study revealed that both Peter Obi and Tinubu had more negative mentions than Atiku Abubakar.
While Atiku had just 50% negatively charged contents about him, both Tinubu and Peter Obi had 90% negatively charged contents about them.
Also, it found out that Twitter was the major source of negative discussions about the three candidates.
“However, in Bola Tinubu’s and Peter Obi’s cases – negatives noticeably outweighed positives, accounting for 79% and 77% of all emotionally charged mentions. In Abubakar’s case, the sentiment distribution tilted in favor of positives, which accounted for approximately 55% of all sentiment-bearing mentions,” the study noted.
According to the study, the larger chunk of the negative mentions about Atiku took pace on June 5, which was the day of the gruesome attack at a Catholic Church at Owo, Ondo state.
Again, the report found out that Facebook was equally very significant in generating positive mentions about the former Vice President.
It said “…there were approximately 1.8 thousand of them recorded, which exceeds the number of positive Facebook mentions about Bola Tinubu and Peter Obi altogether.”
In terms of videos, Atiku equally took the lead in terms of positive mentions as compared with PO and Jagaban.
“Atiku’s sentiment was way better than Bola Tinubu’s or Peter Obi’s. All of Atiku Abubakar’s top 5 topics of discussion were recorded to have favorable values of Positive Ratio, indicating the superiority of the number of positives over the number of negatives.
“In Bola Tinubu’s and Peter Obi’s cases – every topic recognized was characterized by unfavorable values of Positive Ratio, with the number of negatives being much higher than the number of positives. Although this might be not only an indication of a good reputation but also a valuable opportunity, one should consider monitoring the correlation between the volume of mentions and the Positive Ratio more extensively in order to examine whether more controversial or negatively charged discussions are a prerequisite of developing online presence in the given topics.”
Peter Obi Takes The Lead On Post Reach:
The average reach metric per any post about the candidates showed that posts or contents about Peter Obi had the widest reach than those of Abubakar and Tinubu.
According to the report, while posts about Atiku had a total reach of 234 million, those of Tinubu and Peter Obi were 368.2 million and 782.3 million respectively.
Although Twitter generated the largest volume of mentions for PO more than other candidates, the mentions do not translate as much to very significant positive value as the wide reach solely because majority of those organizing discussions generating such mentions are from, though numerous, but low-sized and average-profile individuals.
Out of the volume of mentions, the report said while mentions about Atiku was 66.6 thousand, those of Tinubu and Peter Obi were 207.1 thousand and 234.1 thousand volume of mentions.
However, “on average, a single mention about Atiku had 89% higher Reach than the content on Tinubu,” the report said.
Atiku’s Most Engaging Posts:
In terms of engagement mentions, the Wazirin Adamawa garnered more positive engagements from Facebook posts as compared to the ex Anambra governor’s and ex Lagos governor’s whose chunk of engaging mentions came from Twitter channels and TikTok videos respectively.
Atiku’s highest engaging post on Facebook was about his choice of a running mate on the 16th f June. That post generated about 8 million visits and 79.9 thousand interactions.
Following this post were others like posts on May 29, announcing Atiku’s emergence as the presidential candidate of the PDP which generated 60.9k interactions and 637.6 post visits; and his June 15th post about playing host to the Turkish Ambassador to Nigeria, which generated about 4 million visits and 38.8k post interactions.
Conversely, his online presence score stood at 75 as compared with the 83 for Peter Obi and 80 for Tinubu.
Bola Tinubu’s Most Engaging Posts:
For Bola Tinubu, his most engaging post was that on TikTok by a Tiktoker, ElectionUpdatesNG on 3rd June, 2022 which posted a video where Tinubu asked stakeholders to elect him for president. The video generated 2.2 million post visits and 85.5k post interactions.
Also, coming second highest for Tinubu was another TikTok post by TikToker, Bodealawiye on June 4, which generated 1.4 million post visits and 80.3k interactions.
A third post about Tinubu, was yet on TikTok by Fidebrightajor1 on 22nd June which generated 550.1k post visits and 32.2k post interactions.
Peter Obi’s Most Engaging Posts:
For Peter Obi, his most engaging post was by him on Facebook wherein on the 14 of June, he announced he was departing for Egypt on a 3-day visit to comparable countries with Nigeria. That post generated about 7.1 million post visits and 70.7 thousand interactions.
Also, his Facebook post on 13th June urging, especially his supporters, to accord due respect to every other candidate generated 4.7 million visits and 47.2 thousand post interactions.
A third post about PO with the highest engagement was that by a Twitter user, Ayomide Tayo, with handle, @AOT2, urging other supporters to not only vote for PO but also vote for other Labour Party candidates for other political positions.
That tweet generated about 10.2 million post visits and 39.5 thousand interactions.
On Twitter:
On Twitter, although a post about Atiku Abubakar did not generate as much reach as that of PO, it however, results in better value in terms of engagement.
Similarly, the post reach per his “single Instagram mention was 28% higher than competitors
The study recommended the following:
For Atiku and Tinubu, it said they ought to create more engaging discussions or build a committed community to utilize Twitter better.
Also, the report urged the candidates to boost their engagements on Facebook.
Specifically, it said Atiku needs to boost his Facebook engagements to generate the most significant amount of Reach.
Finally, the report noted that “stimulating more discussion about Atiku Abubakar may help bridge the gap between them (Atiku) and their competitors as far as Reach is concerned.
This Report was written by Mr Eta Uso. Uso is the Special Assistant, Digital Media, Operations, to the former vice president, Atiku Abubakar.
